Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll1871Read this if you…
- want a book that is best described as "playful"
- want a book that is suitable for children (although its much more difficult than modern childrens books)
- care more about spirit and invention than plot
Skip this if you…
- don't care about wordplay and puns and overall goofiness
- want a really good plot (plot is more a vessel for playful writing)
The 
Take
Just a wonderful playful spirit. The story is lacking. The wordplay and poems were fun, but not quite spectacular, but the spirit carried it
Depicted in Art
The King and Queen of Hearts enthroned in court as the Knave stands trial; the full Wonderland cast assembles around the throne.
John Tenniel, 1865
Alice standing beneath a tree, looking up at the Cheshire Cat as it grins down at her from the branch above.
John Tenniel, 1865
Alice at the long disordered tea-table with the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and the Dormouse, all crowded at one corner around a clutter of cups and saucers.
John Tenniel, 1890
Humpty Dumpty perched precariously on his narrow wall, broad cravat and folded arms, lecturing Alice on the meanings of words.
John Tenniel, 1871
A long-haired Alice in flowing nightgown swims through a sea of tears alongside the Mouse, treated as a misty Art Nouveau watercolor.
Arthur Rackham, 1907
Alice climbing onto the mantelpiece and pushing through the silvering mirror, half in the parlor and half in the mirror-world beyond.
John Tenniel, 1871
The long table set in a wooded clearing with Alice, the Hatter, the March Hare and the sleeping Dormouse — Rackham's Edwardian color plate of the most famous scene.
Arthur Rackham, 1907
The White Rabbit in waistcoat and frock coat, pocket watch in hand, mid-stride and fretting about being late.
John Tenniel, 1865
Alice meets the two identical fat schoolboy brothers in their wood, embroidered collars labelled 'DUM' and 'DEE'.
John Tenniel, 1871
The white-haired Father William standing on his head, watched by his disapproving young interlocutor — Carroll's parody-poem made flesh.
John Tenniel, 1865
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2009
Hugh Haughton's Penguin packs in both books and decodes the math jokes, parodies, and Oxford in-jokes Carroll buried everywhere. You stop thinking Alice is whimsical and start seeing how dense it actually is.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Notable Quotes
Off with her head!
Screen & Stage
Alice in Wonderland
Film · 1951
Clyde Geronimi
looseAlice in Wonderland
Film · 2010
Tim Burton
Alice in Wonderland
TV · 1966
Jonathan Miller
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- John Lennon, musician, songwriter, 1940–1980: "I was passionate about Alice in Wonderland and drew all the characters. I did poems in the style of Jabberwocky."
- Virginia Woolf, English modernist novelist & critic, 1882–1941: "It is for this reason that the two Alices are not books for children; they are the only books in which we become children."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist, author of Lolita, 1899–1977: "In common with many English children (and I was an English child), I have been always very fond of Carroll."
- Salvador Dalí, Spanish Surrealist painter, 1904–1989: Dalí answered the Alice books with twelve heliogravures and an etched frontispiece for the 1969 illustrated edition, recasting Wonderland as a Surrealist journey through the subconscious.
- Walt Disney, filmmaker, animator, 1901–1966: Disney chased Alice for nearly three decades — from his 1923 Laugh-O-Gram short to the 1951 feature — and called the book's dreamlike nonsense one of his hardest things to film.